Many flooring options should be considered at your facility. In order to find the correct one ask yourself the following questions. What is the nature of the area? Are there chemicals or oils prevalent? Are the slippery problems occasional or chronic? What type of application is it? Matching your flooring surface to your environment is crucial to your companies’ safety.
Looking at the amount of traffic throughout your facility will help you decide how abrasive your flooring should be. Is there foot traffic or vehicular traffic? Foot traffic may require a more aggressive surface due to excessive oils or grease, or it may require a less coarse surface due to occasional liquid spills. Vehicular traffic requires durable and abrasive flooring options.
Environments with contaminants such as grease, gasoline, food by-products, acid, cleaning compounds and powders need different types of flooring. The flooring may not have to be installed throughout your entire facility, but where the contaminants most likely occur. It’s usually a good idea to plan for the worst case scenario, so these contaminants do not affect employee’s traction. A suggested flooring option would be slip resistant stainless steel flooring. Stainless steel is known for its corrosion and chemical resistance and is extremely easy to maintain and clean. Most food processing plants utilize stainless steel flooring in their facilities. On the other hand, if you work at a manufacturing facility where a lot of grease and oil is prevalent, you may want to install durable non-slip steel flooring.
Depending on whether the application is a ramp, dock, catwalk, stairway or flooring, some sort of slip resistance should be added. Temporary safeguards including tread tapes, sand added to paint and chemical etches may help you temporarily, but will wear easily and not last in the long haul. The re-applications of these treatments may just end up costing more.
SlipNOT®Metal Safety Flooring offers flooring options for numerous applications. The durability and longevity of SlipNOT®’s products will save you money and give your employee’s a sure-footed walking surface they can trust.
Occupational Health & Safety, April 1998 – Total Traction –http://www.astantislip.com/reference/traction.html
